<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">BY-NC-ND 2.0</a>, a.k.a. Music Sharing, license.</p>

Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Shawn Shives

Listen for the Wind

Father, it's good to be here today on this Sabbath day.

Father, help us to praise you with all of our hearts.

Help us to praise you not only here today, but in front of all the people of this world.

Help us to worship you in this place today.

May this be your temple today, not because of the building, but because you have come here to bless us as we seek to seek your face today.

Lord, when we're done with this worship today, may we have given something back to you.

Everybody's moving out here for some reason.

I've been looking at the weather and three-digit temperatures.

I just don't see what you guys are moving out here for yet, but maybe if I stick around long enough I'll figure it out.

But there's wonderful people here though.

I wanted to share with you a message today that's really a mission story of what's going on on the other side of the country, not overseas but in the far, far away land of Pennsylvania, western Pennsylvania.

And I thought I would share that with you today.

Before I start that, I'd like to tell you, maybe you've heard the story before, there was a preacher, a pathfinder, and a nuclear physicist on a plane.

Did you hear this story before, yes or no?

Okay, I'll tell it to you anyway, even if you heard it.

They were flying from somewhere in California, they were flying back to the east coast, and as they got over the Rocky Mountains, the plane began to suffer problems.

And as they feared for their life, the pilot came running back to the passenger compartment, He says, we're going down.

I'm sorry to tell you, we're gonna crash, there's no doubt about it.

He said, but the bad news is there's 4 of us and we only brought 3 parachutes.

He said, so I'm going to have to take 1 of them because my wife is expecting me home for dinner tonight, and I promised to take my kids out tonight, so I've got to go.

So he grabs a parachute and jumps out of the cockpit of the plane.

Now there's 2 parachutes, and there's 3 people left.

And the nuclear physicist, I think he went to the Geoscience Center here in Loma Linda.

He said he was the smartest man in the world, so that must have been.

And he said, I'm the smartest man in the world.

The things I can teach humanely is invaluable.

And the pastor and the pathfinder stand in there and the pastor goes, you know son, I've lived a good life.

And he goes, it's okay, he says, I'm ready to meet the Lord.

And he says, so, I'm okay, you go ahead and live, you got your whole life ahead of you.

And the boy said, well, it's no problem, he goes, because there's 2 parachutes left, because that smartest man in the world took my knapsack and jumped out.

Now is it possible, Advent Hope, Is it possible, just possible, that we could be clinging to knapsacks as Christians?

We're involved in things, but we lack the power of Jesus in our life.

I was a typical pastor in Pennsylvania, starting out in the ministry.

I was 35 years old when I gave my life to Jesus, and a few years later I found myself in the ministry.

But anyway, I was doing the typical thing they do in Pennsylvania churches.

I don't know, I had 3 churches at the time, and I was doing everything I can to make the church members happy.

I was preaching 3 different services on Sabbath morning.

My wife and my youngest son will tell you, I drug them from church to church to church.

They could preach them when they got to the last church.

And then I would teach prayer meeting 3 times a week, 3 different nights.

Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, prayer meeting.

I didn't see the power of God in the church.

And then I had a revelation seminar teaching people in the community and lots of people came to the seminar, but very few church members came.

And 1 night I went home, I was just talking to Jesus, and it was about 1.30 in the morning, it wasn't according to the health message of course, but I couldn't sleep.

So I'm talking to Jesus, I said, Lord, what is going on here?

And I was, I opened the Bible and there was Jeremiah chapter 20 right in front of my face.

And Jeremiah, If you know the story of Jeremiah, Jeremiah was a prophet of reformation.

He was calling the people, God's people back to true worship and out of apostasy.

And he said if you don't come back, there's going to be trouble ahead.

The city will be destroyed, the people will be lost, you'll be scattered around the world.

And the high priest, as Jeremiah was saying these things, only doing what God would have him do, as Jeremiah was doing these things, the high priest, Paschor, persecuted him and actually put him in stocks so the people could walk by the town and walk by and see Jeremiah locked up and make fun of him and Jeremiah got discouraged.

Does that ever happen to you in your Christian walk?

And then in Jeremiah chapter 9 it says, And then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more of his name.

But his word was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary forbearing, I could not stay.

He said, Jesus, the Lord was in his heart and he couldn't keep quiet about Jesus.

I want to tell you what we're doing now in the other side of the country, in my little district.

What I did, I knew I had to find a way through prayer and through looking at the Bible.

I had to find a way to get my members active in ministry.

If you want to grow as a Christian, you have to do something for God.

Jesus has done so much for us, And the way that we grow is to give back to Jesus.

Even when we come to church, we come here not to receive, but to give this morning, I hope.

So I prayed about this for a year, and my conference president and I, we prayed and we talked, and finally I said, you know, I've got to get so busy because when you're a paid pastor, people expect you to do a lot, you know?

And they expect you to do everything, but they expect you to do a lot for them.

Too much in-reach and not enough outreach.

So I said, I told my conference president, they were offering me to go to a different church in Philadelphia, 1 church, 2 churches, whatever you want, Sean.

When the pastor left in the district next door, I asked for his district.

And then when another church got empty, I took a sixth church, and then a seventh church in a school.

Back to Menu

Listen for the Wind

Transcript

Sponsor

Recorded

Sound Doctrine